Photos, Stories and Scrapbooking

Fall isn’t here yet; it still feels like summer. I’m seeing lots of Monarachs. Yet, I know fall is coming with its beautiful color that makes me smile, certainly my last smile as I don’t like winter. The weather man said more fall like temperatures will arrive next week. I can’t wait. I just wish that fall lasted all winter long. In anticipation of the arrival of fall, I created this page today with one landscape photo from 2014 and another of a butterfly that I captured last Saturday. Our fall color won’t arrive until October.

I made the original photo on October 20, 2014, a day with no wind so that the smooth water reflected the landscape along the edge of the lake. I had set my camera at f/11 in aperture priority, 1/500 sec and ISO 1000 at 24mm. This is straight out of the camera meaning I made no adjustments in Lightroom before placing the photo on a new blank 12×12 page in Photoshop.

I have a Photoshop plug-in, Topaz Impression, that can recreate paint strokes in the style of different artists and mediums on photographs. I chose a Degas style first and then layered an overpainting at 75% above the Degas layer. Note: Degas’ scenes of Parisian life, his off-center compositions, his experiments with color and form, and his friendship with several key Impressionist artists connect him with the Impressionist movement of the 19th century.

Next, I placed the psd layers of mask 2 from Autumn Romance FotoBlendz No. 1 a little off center on my page. I adjusted the size of the photo layers and clipped them to the fotoblendz mask. However, the duplicated copies clipped to the leaves and texture of psd mask 2 are the original photo. Note that having a psd file of the mask, allowed me to move one copy of the photo over to fill the mask.

Next, I added two files, 4 and 6, from GoldLeaves No. 4 above the mask to add more depth to the mask. I rotated and sized them to fit over the leaves on the mask layers. To coordinate the color with my photo, I added a color style to each as well as glows to highlight. The leaf on the right is on normal blend mode at 35% opacity. The leaf on the bottom left is on color burn at 35%.

Below the photo layers I add brush 8 (recolored) and overlay 1 from ArtPlay Palette Autumn Romance. This creates a visual diagonal line across my page.

Next, I created a cluster by extracting a butterfly that I photographed last week and placing it on a leaf from ArtPlay Palette Woodland. Below, I placed most of the layers of file 3 from JazzedUp LoopDaLoops No. 1.

One take away for me after experimenting with this page is that I can create visual tension on a “centered” page design by placing a mask off-center, adding texture with a brush only on the right edge and nestling the journaling in an open space created by the mask. Also, I think the dimension on this page with the butterfly extraction, title and gold leaf on the right mask edge create a visual triangle. I don’t have to repeat similar elements, i.e. buttons, to create a visual triangle. What do you think?